Gloomspite Gitz Project - Wave One

Hello!

Another fun commission project, it's arguably the silliest army in Warhammer, the Gloomspite Gitz. This first wave is mostly 'chaff' gobbo units, but there are some bigger and squigglier things on the way as well! The theme of the army is purple squigs (something that started out here), and it's mostly painted using contrast over sponge-work, in a similar way to my recent speed painted Orks. So let's get started...

First up, your standard basic Gits, Stabbas and Shootas, twenty of each. Nothing fancy, but I did amuse myself by enjoying the 'new' night goblin kit, having once collected a force with plenty of the previous ones in it!

Now we're getting into the fun stuff! Squigs! I currently own three different contrast purples, and I used all three here, including various combinations such as the chimera squig in the front row that's split down the middle.

The Sneaky Snufflers - absolutely top tier naming by GW on this unit, and pretty fun to paint up the various fungal growths they've collected.

Now I think this lot are my favourite models from this wave - they are Grinkrak's Looncourt for Underworlds, and a superb collection of little characters they are. One thing I have discovered during this project is that I'm quite a fan of a goblin in rusty plate armour - which was in part achieved with the old forge world rust weathering powder, mixed with a bit of water and liberally applied.

The fanatics were a special request for this army - the client wanted them to be slinging squigs around on their chains! I was happy to oblige with this delightfully mad request. Once again I had a bit of old goblin nostalgia from these - I remember the metal ones two kits ago!

Finally for this wave a couple of Loonbosses. One armoured git standing on some tactical mushrooms, and the other Skragott the Loonking, who is another super fun model from this crazy range (and another couple of purple squigs!)

So that's that for wave one, but as mentioned wave two has the bigger, squigglier stuff, so keep an eye out for that if you like your squigs purple and your gits hanging on for dear life. Hope you enjoyed these guys, thanks for reading, and stay safe out there! 

Speed Painted Orks

Hello!

Here's another couple of smaller projects that I finished up recently, both of them quick and dirty, but very fun, paint jobs on some Orks! First up, 'Spongechop', slightly converted Warbikers:

Though a little more work was done after, these were essentially done with the 'slapchop' method -  washes or contrast paints over drybrushed models, except that I used the mighty sponge instead of drybrushing, giving a bit of a different texture to the final result:

Here the post sponge stage - I initially sprayed them black, then brown zenithal, then sponged on leather, bone and finally off-white. As you can see this has picked out the raised areas and added texture, while leaving the shadows very dark.

And here are the same models after a coat of contrast over most of the model. I went Militarum Green for the skin, Snakebite Leather for straps, Skeleton Horde for bones and tusks, Flesh Tearers Red for some details and then Black Templar mixed with medium for most of the bikes. I left some of the clothes and deeper areas of the bikes un-contrasted as they were already dark and essentially the desired colours. I added more detail, including a bit of a metal drybrush and some Ork Flesh contrast to the recesses of the skin to get the finished result seen above, but I think they'd 100% be usable at this stage if you wanted a nice quick job.

In a similar vein, the next project was another Ork model painted in a similar style - a Painboy. This was another of those discord one hour speedpaint challenges, so I thought it would be the prefect excuse to test the techniques used on the bikers above against the clock! 

I'm very happy with the results once again, especially for an hour's work. I wasn't initially very happy with the Ork skin with just the contrast over the sponge work, so I added some extra highlights to make it pop out a bit - though the skin on the grot worked very well with the lighter plaguebearer flesh and a bit of ork flesh shading. The sponging is absolutely ideal as a base for all the dirty Ork clothes and rusty metal though which was all easily achieved very quickly.

Anyway, hope you like these boyz, thanks for reading, and stay safe out there!

Burning Sands 3 - Adeptus Titanicus Tournament Report

Hello!

It's been a little while since I've been able to play some AdTit, and Grim Dice provided the opportunity to do so with a tournament on a day that I wasn't at work! So I jumped at the chance (or more accurately, I bought a ticket), and tried to remember what I was doing. It has to be said that matched play has kind of passed me by in Titanicus, so I had not actually seen the Matched Play Guide until I bought it for the day, so I wasn't really expecting to win anything. That said, Titanicus is a narrative focused, very swingy game so I was expecting some silly chain reactions and huge explosions and the dice generally causing carnage.

I was running my Mortis engines, and decided to keep it fairly simple with an Axiom maniple, all guns and no melee (I've seen it's strong but it's always gone badly for me), with fairly minimal upgrades aside from some corruption on the Warlord to make it even tougher. I did make the mistake of taking the Warmaster's Beneficence upgrade on three Titans, and then forgetting to use it in every single game!

Anyway, the first thing I noticed when I walked in was that the tables looked really cool. A few borrowed bits from 40k scale stuff but also a lot of appropriately sized city buildings set out on appropriately coloured matts. Not the default L ruins of 40k tournaments at all!

First game was against Stuart (I think - I didn't take photos of the score cards for this one so memory is a bit hazy on player names) with a beautiful Mechanicus Knight force, full of lots of scary guns with loads of templates and some nasty melee options. We both had to grab an objective in the opponent's corner but also kill or protect certain units for secondary points.

The game was a total bloodbath, with neither of us achieving out primary objective and only one Knight Lancer and a few Armigers surviving. A narrow loss based on secondary points but a very enjoyable time! Highlights for me were an over eager Warhound getting surrounded and then exploding, the Warlord shrugging off massive firepower in the first couple of turns with some unreasonably good void shield saves, and then the Melta cannon Reaver doing some serious work with fusion shots on knights melting through them!

Game two was against Dave (again - I think!) with a stunning Legio Solaria Warhound based force. We both had to retrieve an objective from the centre line, while also eliminating certain enemy targets.

Again this was carnage, with a lot of chain reacting catastrophic damages, including my melta Reaver getting a magazine detonation to hit four or five other titans and both my Warhounds getting engine kills by picking up the pieces. In the end we both achieved our primary objective (in spite of the Dire Wolf trying to stun my warhound carrying it) but I was unable to finish either of the priority targets, compared to losing my secondary one, so once again a close loss.

Final game was against Gordon (pretty sure this time - recency bias) with a cool melee focused traitor titans list. For the final game our objectives pretty much boiled down to kill each other.

Good use of stratagems (and poor from me) allowed the enemy engines to close in without taking too much damage and get into the perfect positions for some melee action. I wiped some Knights but this one was much more one sided as the chain fist Reavers chopped through my forces, eventually ending with my last Reaver collapsing onto my last Warhound, hilarously destroying it as well. Tabled for a solid zero points.

With that, I secured the coveted wooden spoon (in this event taking the form of a tub of gravy, obviously) and some good experience going forward. Regardless of results, I had a great time. Titanicus is always a bit of a laugh and the 'competitive' game is still fun with a lot relying on the dice rolls. Not to say of course that I wasn't outplayed - I was, but in AdTit the dice can turn an absolute stomping into an exciting, and potentially close game. I would definitely go again if I can get to the next one, and hopefully I can play some more in the not too distant future! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe out there.